Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Let me say first of all that I fully intended to go home.
I pulled out onto Elliston Place and headed west, then north along Centennial Park until I could turn west again on Charlotte Avenue.
Letting muscle memory guide me while my mind replayed the scene in Jacquie’s apartment.
The tears, the sincere—or sincere-seeming, to be fair—anguish, the way she’d looked like the world had ended.
Was it real? Or was Mendoza right, and it was all an act?
It had seemed a lot more genuine than her behavior at David’s funeral, for sure. That had been a performance. This… I wasn’t so sure.
Then again, I wasn’t kidding myself that I knew how to read people better than someone who had been doing it for a living for the past… probably ten years or so? If Mendoza thought her behavior was suspicious, maybe it was.
What I did know, was that she had hired me to find out whether Nick was cheating. And I had told her, not once but several times, that I hadn’t seen any sign of it. I didn’t believe he had been. If she’d killed him, it hadn’t been over that.
Unless Mendoza was right, of course, and Jacquie had caught him on her own, with someone other than Megan. It hadn’t been last night, though. Last night he’d been with Sal at the Tin Roof, and Zachary would have seen any woman—or man—who joined them.
The Body Shop was on my way home, and I eyed it as I rolled past. Everything looked normal, like nothing was wrong. Business as usual. Two of the bay doors were open, with cars inside and mechanics working on them. The Open sign in the office window was lit. Maybe the police hadn’t gotten here yet.
A small part of me wanted to stop. I had spent so much time watching these people, and thinking about them, over the past few days, that it felt almost like we were close. And I’d known Nick. I knew he was dead. Sal might not, and part of me felt like I should stop and tell him.
Then I imagined Mendoza’s face if I did, and if nobody—or at least nobody official—got to see Sal’s face when he heard the news, and I pushed my need to be helpful down along with the gas pedal and cruised past.
A few minutes later I came upon the turn into Charlotte Park, and I hesitated.
There was no legitimate reason for me to drive by Megan’s place, I told myself. It didn’t matter whether she was home or not. If she’d ever slept with Nick, she wouldn’t do it again. And if she was involved in his death, the police would figure it out. I was off this case.
But on the other hand, what could it hurt to make a tiny detour? It was practically on my way home, or only a couple of minutes out of it. And there was the little boy, the one who might be Nick’s, or at least look like him.
Maybe that was why Jacquie had snapped. Not because she discovered that Nick was sleeping with anyone at all, but because he’d had a fling with Megan six or seven years ago, and now there was a child.
For someone unhinged—and you had to be unhinged to shoot your boyfriend between the eyes—that might be enough to set someone off.
The street looked the same as it had this morning—quiet, residential, settled.
A few residents had put their Christmas decorations out early, I saw: big, inflatable reindeer and snow globes on still-green lawns.
On the other hand, there were those who hadn’t taken down the skeletons and bats yet, when Halloween was several weeks past. One old gentleman who was raking his leaves gave me a wave as I drove past, and I waved back.
No reason to draw attention by being unfriendly.
The little brick house came into view up ahead, and I slowed to a barely-there crawl as I approached.
Megan’s car was not in the driveway, nor were there any pumpkins or snowmen to be seen.
Everything looked as still and abandoned as when I’d been here…
God, was it only a couple of hours ago? Three?
I was just about to put my foot on the gas and pick up some speed when I noticed the car tucked away in the semi-darkness of the carport.
Not Megan’s Accord. Something taller and boxier.
A Jeep. A silver Jeep.
I stepped on the brake and came to a shuddering stop in front of the driveway.
From there, I frowned up the slight incline at it, trying to convince myself that I had to be wrong and that there were plenty of silver Jeeps around.
Just because I had seen a silver Jeep today, didn’t mean that this was that silver Jeep.
After all, I hadn’t—naturally I hadn’t—noticed the license plate, had I?
I was still staring, still trying to convince myself, when the door under the carport opened and Mendoza came out. As I watched, he jogged down the steps and headed for the car, moving with the kind of easy confidence that suggested he’d done this a thousand times before.
I stared at him as my mind churned.
Or more accurately, as my mind deliberated at the speed of a geriatric snail with broken limbs. Each thought felt like it was stuck in glue, and it took a small eternity for me to wrest it out and process it.
I had tailed Megan to this house yesterday.
There had been a little boy inside, who had run out to greet her.
Mendoza had organized for a babysitter last night, because he had to work at Sambuca and couldn’t spend the night with his son.
Elias was five, and while I had never met him, he had probably inherited Mendoza’s dark hair and olive skin.
Slow as it was, the conclusion was hard to escape. This was Mendoza’s house. The kid was Mendoza’s kid. And Megan was the babysitter.
While I’d been processing, the Jeep had started, and Mendoza was on his way down the driveway.
He didn’t get far. It was a short driveway, and I was blocking it, still staring at the Jeep with my mouth open and my eyes wide. He gave a polite little bip-bip of his horn, and I put my car in reverse and backed up a couple of feet, still speechless.
He rolled back until he could turn in the opposite direction. As he came up on the side of my car, he rolled down his window.
I did the same. At least I had managed to hike up my jaw by now. “Listen, Detective…”
“Hello, Mrs. Kelly,” he told me, pleasantly enough.
“If I had known that this was your house—”
I had vowed never to use my newfound private investigator powers for evil. Ergo, I had refrained from looking up Mendoza’s home address. If he wanted me to know where he lived, he would tell me, I had reasoned, and I had, very specifically, kept myself from being nosy.
And now I’d been nosy anyway.
“Nothing much we can do about that now,” he asked, “is there?”
No, there wasn’t.
“I’ll go,” I said. “Right now.”
I’d only been sitting here waiting to see if Megan came home. But if this was Mendoza’s home and she was the babysitter, there was no chance of that.
“How do you even know her?” fell out of my mouth, and Mendoza smirked.
“You have enough information to figure that out, I think. But if I can’t, I’ll tell you some other time. I have to go now, or I’ll be late.”
Yes, of course. “I’ll see you,” I said as I put the Lexus into gear. “Or not, as the case may be.”
Not here again. Certainly not here.
Mendoza just nodded, although that dimple in his cheek deepened a little bit. “Bye now, Mrs. Kelly.”
He rolled up his window and rolled away. I banged my head against the steering wheel a couple of times before I did the same, in the opposite direction.
I spent the rest of the day with Edwina, just the two of us.
First we went to the park and had a nice walk all around the Parthenon and Lake Watauga.
Edwina barked at the birds in the sunken garden and sniffed the Taylor Swift reading bench and just generally made a nuisance of herself while she pulled me along by her leash.
Then we got back in the car to head home, and on the way there, of course we passed the Body Shop again.
By now it was dark and shuttered, and the parking lot was empty.
We steered well clear of Charlotte Park—I wasn’t about to make that mistake again—but as we approached the intersection of Charlotte and Hillwood Drive, curiosity got the better of me.
Instead of turning, I kept going straight.
It wouldn’t hurt to just drive past the crime scene once, I figured, just to see how things were progressing.
Whether the police had finished with it yet or whether they were still there.
“Just a quick look,” I assured Edwina, who was standing up on the front seat with her tail wagging and her tongue lolling out in a doggie grin.
(I did have her harness clipped to the seat.
The give was long enough that she could lie down if she wanted to, but if something happened—if I had to brake fast or, God forbid, if I hit something—she wouldn’t go flying into the windshield.).
“We won’t stop or anything. We’ll just drive by.
I just want to see what’s different since I was there this morning. ”
She didn’t answer, of course. But she danced happily on the seat, and that was good enough.
It isn’t a far drive from Hillwood down Charlotte Pike to Sawyer Brown Road.
Ten minutes later, maybe less, we were cruising up Nick’s street toward the duplex.
Two CSI vans were parked in front, along with a patrol car.
Yellow tape fluttered in the breeze, cordoning off Nick’s driveway and his side of the building.
I slowed to a crawl as we approached, and Edwina stood up on her hind legs, front paws on the edge of the window, for a better look.
One of the crime scene techs was going through Nick’s truck with what looked like a fine-toothed comb—literally, or almost. I could see him brushing something carefully into an evidence bag.
“What do you think he’s looking for?” I asked Edwina. “Hair? Fiber? Evidence that someone other than Nick was in the truck recently?”
Edwina tilted her head at me, ears perked.
“Yes, you’re right. It could be anything. They’re probably just being thorough.”